Draw The Circle
by Clementive
Summary: [Modern!AU]. Strangers to friends. They had always been friends, until they weren't. Friends to strangers. Yet, even when they become strangers, they find each other again and again. Strangers to lovers. Until the circle is complete. KibaIno
1. The Mountain

_I don't nearly write enough fluffy fun stuff anymore because of school. A request gave me the opportunity to do so. So here we are. :)_

 **Title:** _Draw The Circle_

 **Summary:** _Modern!AU. Strangers to friends. They had always been friends, until they weren't. Friends to strangers. Yet, even when they become strangers, they find each other again and again. Strangers to lovers. Until the circle is complete. KibaIno_

 **Main pairing** : _KibaIno_

 **Disclaimer** : _I do not own Naruto._

-X-

 **The Mountain  
 _by Clementive_**

 _For_ _ **Naruto1389**_ _because we both agree this world needs more KibaIno.  
Hope you enjoy it, my dear! ^_^ I know you mentioned only Neji and Kiba as friends, but friends to lovers is my favourite kind of love story. ;)_

-X-

It starts with a mountain that she refuses to leave and one he was pushed down from.

Ino is fourteen and she needs a victory. Today. Now.

Even if it's a mountain of dirt and crumbled melted snow. Even if the wind is harsh and thick in her lungs and she can barely breathe. Soaked in grey, the sky seems to hover around her head with hesitant snowflakes that do not gleam or crown her, and Ino is puffing and panting, her heart hammering against her ribcage. She has seen his scowl before his boots or his hat. The other children have gone home and it's only her, at the top of the mountain, before he has reached the bottom of the pile of dirt and snow she has claimed.

Ino doesn't want to know another defeat because there's always the one of going home. Stepping out of boots, shaking off the snow, the cold, even though the inside of her house is as frozen as the other outside. There is no hope of spring and the ashes in the chimney remain cold because there's also the defeat that is the pink ribbon in her pocket.

"What was that for?" The boy yells, shaking his fist towards her and her chest expands a bit. There is room again for cries and fights and wins. People glancing back at her. She isn't invisible, avoidable, the reason people turn away and close doors and lower their voices.

No.

She is merely lost.

She merely needs a mountain.

Ino has pushed him with more force that was deemed necessary, but if she knows anything is that things break and they are rarely meant to be mended. Every day, she wants to break more and more things. She wants to be surrounded with shattered objets that are both meaningless and meaningful. And she wants the world to crowd with silent faces and unmoving limbs until she shatters it all. Bend them until they move only for her, before her eyes, so that there's no mistake. A growl of pain and coughs and spits onto the snow and she can finally look out the horizon without feeling she's the brittle thing at the bottom of the mountain of rocks and snow.

"I'm the queen of the mountain," Ino mutters in the grey air that fills her mouth.

She shivers looking above his head. The street lamps burn orange halos in the greyness of the day ending. Soon, it will be dark and there will be no escape.

"Hey! I'm talking to you!"

Ino clicks her tongue with annoyance as she glances at the boy again. She has seen him at school, but they have always seemed to belong to different circles. During lunch period, two weeks ago, he came back to school with tattoos on his cheeks. She had scoffed then with the rest of her friends. _Attention-seekers. Troublemakers._ Now, she wishes she had a tattoo or a louder voice. Or both. She wishes she could harden her skin until nothing hurts anymore and she could turn away from friendship. Be the one with the shaking fist until her father stops closing the door in front of her whenever he wants to discuss with the doctor.

No mistake.

"OI!"

"Shut up!"

She clenches her fists at her sides, trembling, and the cold severs the tears are the corner of her eyes. They stung and he narrows his eyes at her. Grumbling, he looks down and starts kicking at the hardened snow. Every time he explodes, his boot knocking off some of the snow, she has to fight down a yell. What if he brings everything down? What if everyone is truly meant to come and go, a mountain of snow and dirt? Nothing pristine, nothing eternal. Just grey and people walking away, without turning back.

She can't breathe.

She thinks of Sakura who let Sasuke come between them. She thinks of the ribbon deep in her pocket and Sakura's retreating back. Then, there is her mother's face and the sickness gnawing at her bones.

She can't breathe and there is nothing but death on her mind.

Until the snowball biting at the frost on her cheeks. Until it knocks the air back in her lungs when she screams, stung and hurt.

"YOU! YOU!"

"Pushing down people isn't nice," he huffs tugging at his earlobe because he has noticed the tears and he knows better than to mention them.

He tries to give her space, trumping at the snow but she just holds her cheek, her pale eyes staring at him.

"You're Kiba, right?"

He opens his mouth, readjusts his hat and tastes nothing but snow. He chokes and she laughs bitterly. Lately, it seems like the only right sound between her mother's coughs and Sakura and her drifting apart.

Kiba bends down and grabs at the snow, glancing up only to see her doing the same. If they are to bring down the mountain, it would be one fist at the time while small rocks bite at their hands through their mittens. They share a mountain of snow and dirt until they are exhausted, their muscles strained from throwing snow balls. When night falls, none of their parents come at the bottom of the mountain to claim them. They both pretended not to notice. They barely speak, their boots kicking at the snow until small parcels of dirt cling at their snow pants.

They sit atop the mountain, in silence, and his gaze drifts to her mouth, pale and cracked with the faintest smirk.

"Don't even think about it, Inuzuka."

Ino throws the snow ball she had been holding on to in front of her and they become friends.

-X-

 _ **I'm still hesitating about whether this would be a collection of 4 or 5 one-shots. I'll see. :) For now, please take the time to let me know what you thought. ^_^**_


	2. The Jail Cell

_**Last chapter was in Ino's POV, so this one is in Kiba's POV. I hope you enjoy it! :)**_

-X-

 **The Jail Cell**

 _ **by Clementive**_

-X-

They haven't talked in years.

Kiba laughs when he recognizes her, even claps until Ino bristles and pesters taking tentative steps in the jail cell. Dazed and grumbling, she sits on the hard bench, her hair hanging loosely on her neck, her eyes narrowed to slits but she doesn't stop him. Her makeup is smudged and he can smell the alcohol on her breath.

"I thought I would only see one Yamanaka today," he snickers and she manages to roll her eyes even if her movements are slow and she barely stands.

"Kiba, please... This is a family matter," sheriff Yamanaka said uneasily, his fingers nervously twisting his keys.

"Daddy!" Ino hisses.

"I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I have been clear about... drinking."

"Daddy? You still call him daddy? How old are you?"

"God, Kiba! Mind your own business, would you?"

When Ino turns toward him, her pupils are enlarged, her lips pinched and he feels nothing.

Kiba doesn't know when the soft edges of their bodies disappeared affecting their speech, their walk, to the way they looked at one another and left conversation unfinished or merely unsaid. For now, he merely laughs because they are two teenagers in a jail cell and he is done waiting for the miracle they hoped for in their childhood. Before they stopped talking, there were times when he would clutch his phone a text he sent left unanswered, and he couldn't help but think about the way she kept walking away from him. How cruel and petty she was. Then, he would wonder about the moment he started doing the same. How hypocritical he was.

He doesn't know when they stopped being friends. He only remembers, one day, not hanging on to slivers of her anymore and they never spoke again afterward. They buried their childhood together, pieces of her loudness, the way her lips would quiver because she refused to cry when watching sad movies, her nails digging in his skin the first time he drove without his license. Now, she is head cheerleader with a scholarship going to college next year, and he still isn't sure where he is headed. There are punk clothes, illegal gatherings, and the animal activism, but nothing truly anchors him anymore. Here or there, everywhere is the same. Except, they aren't. Not to each other.

When their friendship still hung between a scowl and grin, unbalanced, it used to be easier, everything flowing between them. Then, everything rested on jealously and unspoken promises and searing anger.

 _Why him and not me?_

 _ **Why can't you act like a friend instead of a disregarded lover?**_

 _Why did you hide him from me?_

 _ **Why did you let me go?**_

There wasn't a moment when it all shifted Kiba decides then, still grinning while her fingers dig in her scalp and her father closes the door cell. It wasn't a time or place. It was him. It was her. They slid out of touch, out of reach, and she began dating Shikamaru and he was looking at no one but Hinata. And they felt it was wrong. It should have been them, together. Years later on top of a mountain of snow where they would count the snowflakes drifting away from them.

The metallic sound of the door locks him with her and all their shared could-have-beens. For the briefest moment, he falls out of love with Hinata when Ino lowers head between her palms. For the briefest moment, they are friends and they can laugh at one another for having been stupid and got caught. For the briefest moment, they are friends again.

"You two have some thinking to do," sheriff Inoichi Yamanaka coughs uneasily and Kiba knows his mother still refused to pay bail.

The moment is gone.

Kiba hears the drifting of sounds of his girlfriend's quiet pleads in the sheriff's receding steps, alongside his mother's yells and his sister's heavy sighs. He will spend the night and his sister will probably be the one to pay bail in the morning. She will remind him that soon, she will give up on him and then he will be alone. And he will almost tell her that he has been alone ever since she moved out. Ever since their mother saw their father in him. Ever since she threw him out of the house in the snow and turned back to Kiba, the momentum of her whole body not dying and receding like it should have, because a part of her expected him to leave too.

"Big night out, Ino?" He yells because she used to be the only one who didn't tell him to tiptoe around. Shut up. Be calm. Be good. Or else.

When Ino winces and moans, slowly lowering herself down onto the bench until she lies on her back. He takes her all in, the ragged clothes, the alcohol and the piercing blue eyes that shift too quickly between him and the door. She used to dream of escaping, he remembers. But then so did he.

"Shut up, Kiba," she growls massaging her forehead. "At least, I'm not dressed like a fashion fascist. Since when are you punk, anyway? Ugh. We should go shopping."

He closes his eyes, hitting slightly the back of his head on the wall behind him in an impatient gesture. The words seem to have tumble out of her lips before she could stop them and he can imagine her stiffening, ready to pretend she hasn't spoken them.

"Your head is too full of human pyramids for you to notice some underling like me," he grins, but his reply is dulled by the years they have ignored one another. "It has been years."

He thinks it should have been easier, picking up the pieces, their last words, as if all along they have simply forgotten to hang up the phone. As if, all along, they have been waiting for the other's voice. He stares at her, certain there should have been something that was indelible between them. She should have felt it, or he should have. She stares at the ceiling, her bracelets clicking around her wrist as she keeps massaging her forehead. He clenches his jaw, when she gives him nothing but silence.

"Or probably because all you see is Shikamaru's pretty eyes. And by eyes, I really don't mean eyes."

Outside, no passing car moves the dust and he wants to hear her breath catch in her throat, a halting sound, a fight rising in her chest. He wants outrage and her finger pointed and waved under his nose and her face red. Word choked out. Words thrown carelessly. Words that would hurt and set him free.

Words he's used to now.

If Ino isn't his friend anymore, she should be his executioner. His mother. His sister. All the women of his life who have given up on him or are about to. She looks up at him, instead, her hair sticking to her moist skin. They lock eyes and he wishes she were Hinata. Maybe then she would have the right words to make him stop wanting nothing but the extreme.

"Are you mentioning his dick because even your girlfriend doesn't want to see yours and you're jealous? Or do you just act like a dick as a general rule? You know what? Either way, just shut up."

Kiba shifts on his bench, frowning. Each time he turns back towards her, he sees something new, something he should have remembered, but he still doesn't know how it all falls together: them in a jail cell after all this time, him tired from running from cops at an illegal gathering for animal protection and her drunk and slurring her words.

"I would have you know I'm a saint if anything. Before I was cuffed by _Daddy_ Yamanaka, I was trying to save dogs from a horrible death at medical testing facility. When was the last time you tried to save anyone, Ino?"

She blinks in the darkness and he almost raises up to crouch down next to her to see what she sees. To understand when they became so bitter. If it was a moment or if it was just them; who they were, stretched to the bone when imprisoned with their demons.

"Right now, I'm just trying to save myself from a headache," Ino whispers to the darkness. He doesn't think she cares whether he hears her or not and he only gulps down his anger. She never tried to save him. Being locked up with him, he has hoped she would have seen as much.

He walks to the barred window, his hands deep in his pockets. He doesn't understand how much he expects of everyone when no one expects anything from him anymore. He's hungry, hanging up on the next word she would utter in his direction like he's hungry for Hinata's forgiveness and his sister's phone call every week.

"God, I think I'm going to be sick," Ino moans, suddenly sitting up.

Kiba grimaces and jerks back towards her. His palms prickle with the knowledge that her father would come back for her if she retches. His punishment for her drinking would never extent beyond that. He stands in front of her because he is selfish and the thought of being alone gnaws at him. Delicately, he brushes her hair out of her face, tucking strands behind her ears. He trembles slightly and she flinches.

They haven't touched in years.

"Just breathe deeply through your nose."

He feels her forehead and she moans again, her eyes fluttering under her lids. Sighing, Kiba lets himself fall heavily on the bench next to her. She shifts, reflecting, hesitating, before she lets her head fall in the crook of his neck. He pulls her closer even if he knows it doesn't change the fact that they aren't friends anymore. She has given up on them, before he has. It makes him both angry and desperate for more.

But everything barely eased out of their past only belongs to this moment.

These walls.

This prison cell.

He kisses her forehead, knowing there would be no trace of it tomorrow.

-X-

 _ **2/5**_

 _ **I don't know why this became so bittersweet, but I'm not sorry. Hope you enjoyed it! I would really appreciate it if you would take the time to leave a review! :)**_


	3. The Roof

_**To rainyrhapsody: Thank you for your review! I really appreciate your support! ^_^**_

 _ **I know it has been a while, but the chapter is longer than usual. I hope you enjoy, guys! :)**_

-X-

 **The Roof  
 _by Clementive_**

-X-

Her apartment is a mess.

She should have never trusted Tenten, Ino tells herself again, but at this point of the night, it has become a senseless rambling, evoking nothing but disconnected words and the lingering emptiness between them. Her thoughts juggle together, her whole body already bent. Her father called twice earlier and left two messages. She didn't listen to them. She is hot and clumsy, her hand pushing her back again when she catches herself on a table.

She is surrounded.

Bodies push back against her and the room is suffocating her. Nothing glides past by as it used to, it sticks to her skin, it encircles her neck where her choker necklace is. Its fake beads beat against her collarbone when she walks stiffly through the horde of bodies toward the kitchen. People, she corrects herself through the foggy maze of her mind. She is the body. The Dead Woman Walking. Wherever Ino turns, her eyes catch a face contorted in the build-up of a smile, or another one frozen mid-laugh, throat exposed, head thrown back. Her heels stick to the sticky floor when she reaches the kitchen.

"Where's Tenten?" Ino shouts to no one in particular, but she is only greeted with non-communicative shrugs.

Pinching her lips together, she grabs a plastic cup filled to the rim on the counter and pivots on her heels. The liquid bounces, but she does not look down. She is not careful, she is reckless, her skin ablaze, her insides curling into themselves because there is no more room to breathe.

It is not only the music pounding in her skull, the elbows brushing her sides, and the sweaty strands of hair sticking to her arms, it is the howling inside. The too short skirt. The oppressing urge she has to destroy the party, crash the lights, the alcohol, and make them all leave her apartment. She wants to yell. Behind her, someone shouts, rising his glass of beer, the liquid spilling onto the floor. She grits her teeth, pausing, wondering. Ino can barely make out what he is saying, she cannot understand the celebration. She knocks back her drink and her nails crushed the plastic cup leaving it without ceremony among a pile on the coffee table. Her skin grows vibrant, tingling in her extremities and the deafening music rattles her bones. Yet, she cannot distinguish between the sensation of her spiralling raging thoughts and the alcohol burning down her throat.

She finally sees her roommate's dark hair styled into buns and flips her hair over her shoulder before making her way toward her. Ino taps on her shoulder and Tenten turns, her smile widening when she sees her. The guy she has been talking to raises a brow at her, smiling coldly, but Ino does not care. Her apartment is a mess. Her life is a mess. This, she can register.

"Yamanaka! I'm glad you've finally joined us!" Tenten screams in her ear and she pushes a plastic cup in her hand.

Ino winces. ' _Finally_ '. There had been no ' _finally_ ', no relief when she emerged from her room. She preferred the loud crowd to her father's calls; her bedside table was still buzzing, the screen was still flashing, when she left her room.

Yet, she had to force herself into a dress, in applying her make-up, then in choosing her shoes. She didn't want to go out of her room. And she wonders if Tenten knows that she has not shed a tear over Shikamaru. That she probably was never in love. That now she is afraid she has scattered herself too much over their five years together.

"You said this was supposed to be a small gathering of people!" Ino hisses after licking her lips, but the music swallows half her words, alcohol and anger eating at the others. Even then, Tenten shrugs, her eyes tweaking with mischief.

"Oops."

Tenten says it like she does everything else: without pause, as if questions and problems are not to be taken seriously. She doesn't ask, she states and takes, then her attention drifts and nothing still holds her back. For the briefest moment, Ino envies her. For the briefest moment, she imagines herself carefree, reaching for another cup, the meaning of break-up with Shikamaru long forgotten. But she wants to be the romantic girl who cries about first times, lost times, memories still infiltrating her thoughts, and kisses. She wants to be the mourner. Not the angry girl. Not the girl who has spent days in her room, her fists clenched because she used to have everything figured out about her future. Now, she has nothing but a pile of memories she cannot keep herself from revisiting, straightening, and spinning into something that was never there.

"You're the one cleaning this mess afterward," she hears herself say, but Tenten grabs her arm before she can spin on her heels and head back toward the kitchen.

"I'll be back, love. C'mon, Ino!"

She watches Tenten's head bounce with the music in front of her and Ino has the sudden urge to cry. As a child, she has pulled Sakura forward in life the same way and they headed toward nothing. They tumble out of the apartment, then down the hall. When the cool air hits her skin, her head clears, the music fading into the background. Tenten lets go of her arm and her smirk half hidden in the darkness as she turns around, one heel on the second step of the fire escape stairs. She wriggles her eyebrows one last time, before climbing up the stairs toward the roof and Ino finally laughs out loud. Her hair sticks to her forehead and back of her neck, as she races up. They elbow each other, laughing and cursing about their heels. When they reach the roof, they kicked them off, still gasping for air. Ino bends down, then decides against it. Her tight are slick with sweat. She rolls on her back. Above, there are no stars, just darkness.

Then, Tenten leans in, her head hiding the sky. Ino grunts, because she was floating and drifting and somehow, that Tenten downstairs was comforting. Tenten who does not care. Tenten who does not listen to her. Tenten who does not know. But she does all these things and Ino wonders if the fact that she does not notice it more often just proves that she is the terrible friend.

"I never liked Shikamaru."

"Shut up, Tenten. Jesus. Please, I don't—"

Ino massages her temples, then unsteadily rolls over her stomach, trying to drown Tenten out. Her mouth fills with the scents of concrete and grit while the ground warms against her skin. She should have kept drinking.

"He snores!"

Ino laughs again, its sound hollow and half-heartened. Silently, she begs Tenten to stop there. She holds her side, because she fills it all simmering to the surface. Her nails dig into her sides. She fears the explosion, the damning words that would reveal that she is lost. That she has been lost for years. A lost angry girl without a plan. Ino has done everything out of habit, planned everything from the day she met Shikamaru, to her college days and now she isn't sure about anything. Shikamaru was a routine. So was pre-med. There are still no tears, just a dormant anger.

"Who is that?" Tenten hisses, straightening her back in a jerk.

She hears voices, whispers, then shouts and she grunts as she dusts herself up. She picks her heels up, the world swinging slightly.

"Well, this conversation was fun, but gotta run and make sure nothing is set on fire by your small gathering. I'll let you deal with whoever if going to drunkenly throw himself off the roof."

Then, Ino sees him, and she has nothing to say anymore.

She glances down at the pavement. 6 stories. Blankly, the windows blink back her, worlds hidden behind drawn curtains, few with still open lights and curtains. Few inviting, tempting. Lighthouses for a lost girl found by her childhood best friend. She glances back up and Tenten has her hands on her hips, her frown deepening. Even above, the lights are rare.

Then, he sees her, and he has everything to say.

"Hello, princess."

"Who the hell are you?"

"A friend."

Ino lets her heels fall back at her side, their thud louder in the silence that follows. Tenten looks at her but she doesn't look back at her. She cannot.

 _A friend_ , Kiba called himself while they have not seen each other in years. While every time they do see each other, one of them imagines them for more than they are and they grow angrier against the world, against each other. They break apart, every time, used to climbing mountains and mountains to find each other, and she is weary, because mountains crumble. He left the village years ago, while being the only constant in her life.

It takes Kiba one leap to jump on the roof from the fire escape and he spins on his heels, lowly whistling to himself. His hair spikes in all direction, his tattoos appear as odd marks on his cheeks in the darkness, but he is dressed in a suit. The rings around his thumbs faintly gleam and when he faces her again, he's smirking. He's both the boy she remembers and the man she thought he would never become.

"Hey! Is anyone going to answer me?"

"It's alright, Ten. You can go downstairs."

"What? You're sure?"

Tenten's smile freezes on her lips and she barely breezes out the words, carefully watching her. Tiredly, Ino waves her hand between them.

"Kiba, Tenten. Tenten, Kiba. We went to high school together."

"So, I know that if Ino doesn't want me here, she can puke on my shoes. Like last time." Kiba smiles wolfishly, bowing his head slightly.

"Shut it, Inuzuka or I swear I will."

Ino glares at him, reddening at the memory of vomiting in front of him when they were stuck in the jail cell. He shrugs, playfully wriggling his eyebrows, but his laughter rings true. Comforting. Strong. She does not understand how these years apart could have brought them closer.

Still frowning, Tenten opens her mouth, but then chooses against it when she sees them hunched, gravitating toward each other.

"Throw him off the roof if he bothers you. Or scream!" Eyes narrowed to slits, Tenten pauses on the first step. "I can't believe you keep boys a secret from me. We'll have a conversation about this, young lady."

After Tenten disappears, they don't speak for a while, not until they sit on the edge and their legs tangle in the void. Ino breathes in slowly and she can tell he has found his way back. She is the one stalling behind this time. She may not lash out, she may not end up in a jail cell like he did when he was younger, but she has given up on her herself.

"So, who invited you?"

"I was in town and _Daddy_ Yamanaka," Ino rolls her eyes and smacks his arm, but he grabs her hand, his eyes widened with contained laughter. "Your father told me you moved out. He called, you didn't answer... I showed up here and there was a party. By the way, I saw your panties when you ran up those stairs."

He laughs and jumps back up before she can smack him again.

"Alright, alright, I saw nothing."

Her blush spread to her neck, watching him intensely as he crouches back in front of her. She has not thought in a while about him, and all the could-have-been's, but he is solid, broader than she remembers, and on his way to becoming a lawyer. Becoming someone. She can see that he's done being angry against the world.

"I heard you are now living in the big city."

He nods, twisting his ring around his thumb.

"Yeah, I'm only here for the night."

Cocking his head on the side, he waits for her to tell him about herself. He knows her father had told him about him, making him an example of a "boy who now stays out of trouble". She wonders what he sees when he looks at her now that she is nowhere near becoming someone. Now that even with the alcohol in her system, it doesn't dull the anger, the weariness, and the hint of sadness that dampens everything she does.

"You heard about Shikamaru and me, is that why you're looking me like that?"

"No. I just really did see your panties," he smirks.

"God, you're immature!"

Turning her head away from Kiba, Ino masks her expression, the nervous jerkin her hand as she pushes back her hair from her forehead. She is terrified of what is left for her in the present—now and then, always opposed, always changing—the leap between everything has stretched and she wants to ask him how he did it. How he found himself again.

If she would ever find herself.

"Kiba..." Ino stops. She looks straight ahead, aware of the void below. Her skin hums, suddenly alive by the enormity of everything. Below and above. Nothing would hold her back, if she jumped and she is afraid of living her life like this. Unplanned. Unexpected.

"I think you should scream."

"What?" She looks at him, the word loudly echoing back to her. Except they don't bounce off any wall, or anyone. It is just them and her discomfort.

"Scream." He shrugs, running a woobly hand in his hair. "I screamed a lot when Hinata left me and threw the word 'ambition' in my face. For a shy girl, she could pommel anyone to the ground with words."

"Shikamaru told me nothing about ambition. He was the one lacking it."

"I know and you told him, yeah?"

"No," she whispers, her lips set in hard line.

"What happened then?"

She furiously shakes her head. She wants to believe they can't pick up where they left off when they stopped talking. She wants to believe it is the alcohol making everything between flow, but nothing is that easy, she knows. Shikamaru's not being in her life anymore doesn't mend the years they had spent apart or the fact that she envies his quiet confidence, or that he speaks about Hinata like she should be speaking about Shikamaru. However, she doesn't want to speak. She doesn't want to name the feelings Shikamaru had, unbeknownst to himself, for another girl. She doesn't want to say that if she cared about him enough to let him go, he never cared enough about her to push himself. To make plans. To be honest to himself and her. To make him want something troublesome with her.

She wishes they had cared more than they did.

Disillusioned. That is what she is now.

Happy. That is what Shikamaru is now.

"I don't want him back, if this is what you're expecting," she mutters, her eyes fluttering between his and his lips. And the sky. And below.

She only wants her plan back, because there is nothing more painful than being lost.

"I still think you should scream."

"Oh my god, my father asked you to have this conversation with me."

"Naw," Kiba chuckles and her breath quickens. It hammers her skull painfully, her insides freezing with the guilt of not returning her father's calls.

He leans in closer and she startles, feeling his eyes bearing into hers.

"Do you want something to drink?" Ino clears her throat and carefully stands up.

"Are you going—"

"No, I'm not go puke on your shoes," she snaps violently, her hands shaking, drawing useless circles above her head. She should scream. She should fly. She should. She should. Her hands curl shakily at her sides, instead. "Would you stop with the same jokes already?"

"Fine," he huffs but she knows he is trying to quell a laugh while inside her, the tears rise.

When they go down, he is so near, his breath is all she can hear. His warmth, is all she can feel. She grips her high heels tighter then jumps on the ground. She shakes off the tears. She shakes herself off. She can't think of him like that. She can't use him like that.

 _A friend_ , he said.

The door of her apartment is ajar, but the music is gone. Traces of spilled drinks cover the floor and any surface that isn't occupied by plastic cups and bowls of chips. Ino drops her keys by the door, sighing deeply. She tiptoes toward the kitchen, Kiba laughing silently behind her. There is a note on the fridge with hearts and a drawing of a roof and Ino quickly scans the paper where Tenten describes that she would rather sleep at her parents's than in this filth. She balls the paper.

"Water, soda?"

"You're boring."

"Vodka, it is."

Cursing under her breath, Ino tosses around plastic cups, loudly opening the cupboards as she searches for glasses. Quietly, Kiba stops her, prying her fingers from the bottle of vodka. She carefully leans back as he takes a sip. Never taking his eyes off her, he hands her back the bottle.

"I think about yelling all the freaking time," Ino admits and alcohol rolls in her mouth.

Her tongue is thick, refusing to weigh down words. She drinks again. His arms hold her into place; they are both wondering about the proximity, both advancing by inches even if when the world stills, they stand still too near or too far away. The middle is disregarded. They loved each other in the past, or they will love each other. For now, they are close, they hang on and they won't let go. Ino wipes her mouth and she can feel his sad chuckles build and rise in his chest.

"I haven't talked to my mom in years."

He is the scream under her skin.

He is the anger within her core.

Kiba rests his forehead against hers and her lids flutter shut. She pushes the bottle back behind her, and her head spins and he is no anchor.

"I didn't come for this," he slurs thickly, his lips against her cheek, then her throat.

"Why did you come then?"

She holds his cheek, still hesitating between drawing him closer or pushing him back.

"You were supposed to fall in love first."

When Kiba kisses her, he offers her nothing but the present. One night, one time. Her skin hums as she grips her waist, pulling her closer, sucking her into a world that stands still. His hands tangle themselves in her blond locks, igniting a shiver that rests at the bottom of her back. She finds herself reaching for his neck, then his tie. She pulls, unbuttons, kisses and nibbles on his below lip. He is not a lifesaver. She is her own current, her own force. He growls against her mouth when he touches her stomach with both his hands. Her body arches off the counter. Her nails lightly pressed against his back, his shirt falls onto the floor. Releasing her lips, Kiba pants silently, watching her as his fingers still over the hem of her skirt.

'Just now," she reminds herself, even though when he touches her again, she doesn't want to think anymore. She closes her eyes and there is only them, braced against each other, at once united and apart.

She would find herself tomorrow. Someday. The next morning he would be gone. Until he finds her again. And again. Because they are still nothing but a half drawn circle yet to be completed.

-X-

 _ **I rarely write make-out sessions, but I made an exception for Kiba and Ino. ;) Please, take the time to review! Thank you! :)**_

 _ **Next chapter will be in Kiba's POV.**_

 ** _3/5_**


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